A blog of our 1999 trip from the burning season in Bolivia and the summits of the Andes altiplano down the Urubamba, Ucayali and Amazon to Manaus and on to Rio to document human impact in the greatest biodiversity hot spot on planet Earth for the millennium.

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This photo-blog is designed to work either as a standard blog with images or - by clicking any image - a photo-album. To see an image in full resolution click to the left or right of an image in blog mode. The images were generated from video to give the best possible view of the journey.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Initially we arrived in Lima and traveled south to La Paz where we hired a Land Cruiser and drove a circular route through the Bolivian dry tropical forest during the burning season as well as two trips to the Yungas to look at ecological transition zones.

We then came back to Puno stopping on Isla del Sol and then began the journey in the blog from Puno to Cusco and then to Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu and over the Cordillera Oriental to Quillabamba following the Urubamba much of the way.

We then went down the Urubamba through the Pongo de Manique to Sepaua, and the Ucayali to Atalaya and Pucallpa. From there we went to Iquitos via the Pacaya-Samiria National reserve. We then traveled down the Amazon through Leticia and Banjamin Constant to Manaus.

At this point we went up the Rio Madiera to Port Velho and by bus to Cuiaba where we took the Transpantaneira through Pocone part way to Porto Jofre on the Pantanal. We then traveled by bus through Brazilia to Rio.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The central park along the foreshore of the business district were we stayed.

Rio was a fitting point to complete our Trans-Amazonia crossing. The Rio Biodiveristy Convention, which the US failed to ratify for intellectual copyright reasons in 1992 formed a signal point in the world's attempts to care for the planet's diminishing biodiversity and avoid a human-caused mass extinction of the diversity of life, se we used Rio as a stepping off point to make a final commentary.

Panoramas of the central park area.

Favellas hang very close to the commercial centre.

overlooked by the Cristo Redemptor

The neighbourhood was very friendly, particularly when we extolled the virtues of Rio

Ironically we stayed at the Hotel Benjamin Constant!

Panoramas of the Eastern marina and beaches.

Taking the subway to Copacabana

Copacabana

The disappeared

Panoramas of Copacabana beach

Back in the central business district.

Taking a trip to the Botanical Gardens.

The Botanical Garden form a tiny patch of what was originally a unique huge area of native forest with unique species now severely threatened. As such it forms a warning to what the Amazon Basin could become if piecemeal deforestation is allowed to continue.

I then took the funicular rail up to the Cristo Redemptor to get a panoramic view of the whole of Rio.

Panoramic views from the summit.

Chris merging with the Christ

At the summit, I made a closing statement about the threat to biodiversity and its "redemption""

I'm coming here to Rio to pronounce something about the millennium, and its about the destruction of biodiversity in the Amazon and its preservation.

I come on this vigil to Rio because the Rio biodiversity convention happened in 1992 and essentially all those good promises have been abandoned, that the rate of clearing of rain forest in the Amazon basin has increased by perhaps thirty percent. The last burning season in Bolivia was an atrocious example just as the fires in Sumatra in 1997 and 1998 with el Niño were atrocious, of absolutely wanton destruction promoted by many factors - promoted by national governments to make rapid gains, because of corruption; promoted by trans-national corporations; promoted by the world bank, who are trying to amend their track record, but their track record is atrocious, promoted by hacienda owners who manage to get large swathes of land by owning cattle, and in final turn by small scale settlers who don't know any better, because of the examples that are set - massive destruction of hell fire throughout the hot spots of genetic diversity on this planet.

Now the religious tradition stands accountable, particularly Christianity and the Juidaic tradition assuming dominion over nature in the very genes, in assuming dominion in the Eden story by the sweat of our brow to conquer nature, in a failure of engagement, in a confrontation with the natural in which woman was cursed, the snake was cursed, nature was cursed and by the sweat of our brow we set out to dominate nature and that has been an excuse ever since for civilization to dominate nature in the name of religion.

And what we find now looking back on this whole epoch is that it is really a stream of consciousness account of the fall of humanity in patriarchal urban civilization from integration and atunement with nature. And we now stand as the dawning of cosmic humanity looking at ourselves and the universe, and this is the real apocalypse, this is the unveiling of our true nature as cosmological entities biologically in space-time.

The aim of Jesus' mission was to bring about the return of the tree of life and that was the sense in which he was trying to undo the original mistake that people perceived to have been made in Eden. Now the mistake that was made in Eden was to forsake the continuity of immortal life and the prophecy at the end of the Bible is that of the return of the tree of life, which is "things hidden since the foundation of the world". The tree of life was idden and withdrawn by God lest we have both immortal life and knowledge . Now to care for the planet in cosmological time we need now to have the tree of life back.

And there is a phenomenal contrast between the destruction of the Amazon forest by fire by what is inferno and the destruction of all the great forests of the world by logging by fire by chainsaw by bulldozer, but particularly by fire because inferno is the word for hell and paradise is couched in terms in every artistic representation of the diversity of the animals, Adam naming the animals, the diversity of the animals and plants, and the creation of the cosmos in its diversity and we stand responsible in cosmic time.

Shortly after Jesus was crucified, there were over a million people reputedly killed in the seige of Jerusalem and there was a diaspora of Israel so there's a real sense that the ends of days that was prophesied by the Jewish apocalyptists in a political sense actually did come about, but the mission o0f Jesus and the timing of the mission stands very temporary in human political terms by comparison with the sort of crisis we are perpetration on the world in evolutionary time through the destruction of biodiversity and by genetic engineering our food plants.

And the damage that is being done now in the Amazon and that damage that will be done of compienis like Monsanto are allowed to engineer the food plants that are grown across the vast productive areas of the planet and not protect the natural diversity of our food plants is absolutely huge and will be a detriment and a famine to humanity which could last fifty million years, at least ten million years.

We are facing a situation that between a third and two thirds of our genetic diversity will be lost now you cannot regain that ever.

And the damage that is being done now in the Amazon and that damage that will be done of companies like Monsanto are allowed to engineer the food plants that are grown across the vast productive areas of the planet and not protect the natural diversity of our food plants is absolutely huge and will be a detriment and a famine to humanity which could last fifty million years, at least ten million years.

We are facing a situation that between a third and two thirds of our genetic diversity will be lost now you cannot regain that ever.